Vera would never get tired of waking up beside Sharise, the heat of two bodies warming sheets tangled between two pairs of legs. Tentative morning light crept through the open window to hang its bright train over smooth brown shoulders and pale hands with needle-pricked fingertips, over two small feet stuck out the bottom to cool down and another pair tucked tight into the blankets.
It was too early to be awake, especially after their late night, but Vera didn't want to go back to sleep. Not when she could lay here listening to the gentle sigh of Sharise's breath like meditation.
Dark lashes flickered, then fluttered open over brown eyes hazy with sleep. "What's that look for?"
Vera realized she was grinning stupidly. "Just thinking about how beautiful you are."
"Even in my bonnet?" One perfectly manicured nail flicked the ruffled edge of the pink silk cap over her hair.
"Especially in your bonnet." Vera snuggled closer, palm finding the softness of Sharise's bare hip under the sheets. She set her lips against Sharise's collarbone, then against the hollow at the base of her throat, her skin warm and sweet.
Sharise let out a small sound of contentment. "You're insatiable."
"I'm just waking you up. Or did you forget we had a breakfast date?" Vera said in a perfectly reasonable tone, while her hand trailed over the curve of Sharise's thigh with a very different question in its touch.
"I don't think this counts as a breakfast date." Sharise shifted her hips. One arm settled above her on the pillow as her eyelids drifted lower.
"We could consider room service," Vera said against her ear.
It wasn't the thought of room service that shallowed Sharise's breathing. She slipped one hand around the back of Vera's neck and pulled her closer, lips brushing against the shallow bridge of her nose and then against her lips with a mingle of slow exhaling breath.
A sharp knock at the door startled Vera upright.
More hammering followed. Sharise let out a sigh that was very much not contentment.
"Is it too much to ask that nothing goes wrong for just one day?" she grumbled, sitting up with a hand on her bonnet.
Vera tossed her one of the bathrobes and shrugged the other on herself. When she pulled the door open, she almost took the next knock straight to the face.
Publicist Cora caught herself before she knocked Vera right out. Her hair was disheveled, and she had deep shadows under her eyes, like she had barely slept. She kept glancing at her tablet as she spoke. "I'm looking for Sharise."
"Can it wait?" Sharise was still tying the knot of her robe as she came up behind her.
Cora gave her A Look. "Would I be here banging on your door at this ungodly hour if it could wait? I've been trying to reach you. Did you turn your phone off?"
"You seemed to have everything under control. I guess I should have checked in." Sharise pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. "It's that bad?"
"That bad." Cora tapped at the screen of her tablet. "Come up to Carmen's room. We might as well talk about this all together."
"Let me get dressed."
"Don't take your time."
So Cora headed back down the hall, and they shut the door on their hope for a peaceful morning.
Sharise paused over the yellow jumpsuit she had laid out for their breakfast date but opted for jeans and a loose floral top instead. Vera wriggled back into her clothes from the night before, trying to keep her disappointment under control. She knew this was an important time for Carmen. Maybe they could make time to grab lunch later, after this was all sorted out.
"News about the yacht party got out?" she guessed, buttoning her cropped red blouse at the waist.
"I'd rather not speculate." Her jaw set, Sharise shook out her braids. "I don't know how long this might take. You can wait here if you want."
"I think you might need the moral support."
"I think we all might."
Carmen's room was on the top floor. Sharise spent the ride up trying to get reception on her phone to find out what had Cora in a tizzy, but something about the building's design killed the signal. They could hear the damage the moment the elevator doors slid open: something heavy shattering, followed by a long scream of rage. A well-dressed couple knocked past them into the elevator before they were even out, glancing fearfully over their shoulders while their Louis Vuitton luggage bounced along beside them.
"That's Troy and Marina going online official-level upset," Vera said under her breath.
"Yes. And that's going to be a big invoice and an angry note from management."
Vera had only experienced that prior meltdown over the phone. The idea of facing it in person sank dread into her stomach. Maybe tagging along had been a bad decision. She'd already narrowly missed getting punched in the face by Cora this morning. She didn't need Carmen chucking furniture at her head too.
Sharise knocked, probably to be sure nothing would come flying at them when she opened the door. She needn't have worried; Carmen had melted dramatically onto a chair by the time Cora ushered them in. They stepped gingerly over shards of brightly painted ceramic drowning in pools of water amid vast, waist-high heaps of wilting flowers. The remains of Troy's bouquet. Vera was astonished Carmen had been strong enough to not just lift the massive thing, but throw it.
Wrapped up in a monogrammed hotel robe that matched the ones Sharise and Vera had tossed on earlier, Carmen stared moodily out the huge windows. Fresh sunlight reflected off the rippling surface of the Grand Canal below. Without looking around, she said, "Is that my coffee?"
"It's Sharise," Publicist Cora said, closing the door behind them.
"Oh, thank god. Sharise, I need coffee."
Sharise folded her arms. "Coffee is not the urgent matter that had Cora banging on my door."
"Coffee is urgent. We did lines at like four AM and I haven't slept yet."
A wrinkle formed between perfectly threaded ebony brows. "Have you had breakfast?"
"I'm not hungry." One listless wrist lifted to fold a limp curl behind her ear.
"I ordered coffee and something to eat," Cora said quietly. "Should be here soon."
As they spoke, Vera looked around to see how big Carmen's tantrum had been. This hotel room was even more opulent than Sharise's. They stood in a kind of sitting room, with carved chairs cushioned in velvet and oil paintings hanging on the walls; to her right, glass doors opened to a bedroom with a vast rumpled bed. The bikini Carmen had been wearing the night before lay in a puddle on the tile floor. Astonishingly, the bouquet seemed to be the only thing broken. So far, anyway.
"So, what happened?" Sharise asked.
"Oh, nothing much." Sinking lower into the chair, Carmen rolled her golden shoulders. Her voice betrayed her by splintering as she said, "Just the tiny, itty-bitty, totally insignificant matter of my life being literally ruined."
"Ruined sounds pretty serious."
"Christ, Cora, just show her the article. I'm not explaining this. Fuck."
Sharise looked at Cora, who handed her a tablet. She stared at the screen, her eyes going wide.
"Oh," she said. That one word carried all the heartbreak in the world. "Someone from the party?"
"I'm guessing someone from the waitstaff," Cora said. "I've been in contact with management." Having surrendered her tablet, she now jabbed at her phone furiously.
"I'm telling you, it wasn't staff," Carmen snarled. "Why would they risk losing their jobs over this? Someone sold me out."
"You said there weren't many guests left. Who else would it be?"
"Everyone resents my comeback. I'm supposed to be the damaged child star who can't land a good job anymore because I'm so difficult to work with, as if that ever stopped Jared fucking Day from getting hired. But here I am, star of the film that's poised to win the Golden Lion. Hollywood is full of jealous little rats."
Vera leaned in close, trying to see past Sharise's shoulder. "What is it?" she asked in a hushed voice.
"Who is that?" Carmen's head whipped around. "Oh, hell no." She leapt to her feet, eyes flashing, and pointed one elegant finger accusingly. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
Vera's stomach plummeted straight through the floor. Was this it? Had she been found out? At some point during all their frolicking last night, had Marina given her up to Carmen?
"What do you mean?" she managed.
"What do I mean? Did you hear what I said? Someone sold me out. I can't trust anyone right now."
Although the bed looked slept in, Carmen certainly looked like she was telling the truth when she said she hadn't slept, her hair drooping slack and her skin a little greasy and grey. She also looked like she had been crying, her eyes pink and puffy around the rims and her hands shaking.
"Carmen," Sharise said firmly, putting her hand on Vera's shoulder, "Vera didn't do this. She was with me all night."
"Of course she was with you all night," Carmen sneered. "What a convenient alibi."
"Alibi?"
"I never should have let you two start fucking. Were you in on this, too?"
Sharise's face turned to stone. "Don't be absurd."
Sniffling, Carmen shook her head. "I've been betrayed at my moment of glory. What am I supposed to think?"
"If you think I would do this to you, after everything we've been through, then you might as well fire me right now."
Shuffling up to Sharise with none of her usual grace, Carmen tilted her head, studying her face. After a long, taut silence, she shook her head, once. "Fine. But I need to know why the hell you two were so insistent that I make up with Nia."
Baffled at this non-sequitur, Vera looked at Sharise.
"You were miserable without her around."
It was impossible to hear Sharise say that and believe her motivations could have been anything other than Carmen's happiness. Even Carmen couldn't seem to find any fault in that explanation.
As she turned, she drew her slipping robe back up her shoulders and Vera realized she had a bruise on the side of her neck - a small pink bruise, like orchid petals, just about the size of someone's mouth. Her eyes darted to the bed, its messy sheets and dimpled pillows. Two pillows, both hollowed by the weight of sleeping heads.
"What about you? You were so pushy. Wanted us to make up so bad, didn't you? Why the hell does my stylist care so much about who I'm friends with?"
"I, uh." When Carmen was already in full meltdown mode didn't seem like the time to come clean, but what choice did she have?
"I think I can answer that," Cora said, looking up from her phone, before Vera had decided what to say. "Is it true that Marina is one of your clients?"
Suddenly everyone was staring at her. Sharise looked shocked. Carmen's face quickly darkened from surprise into murderous rage. She felt light-headed, like this was happening to someone else.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," she blurted, knowing as she said it that it was already too late. "I thought if you and Marina made up, then it wouldn't matter. You wouldn't be upset, I mean. I mean, it was just work. I–"
"Just work? I can't believe I trusted you. How long have you been planning this? God, you arranged those flowers, didn't you? I hope you at least got a huge fucking payday when you sold your soul to the tabloids." Carmen was yelling by the end, jabbing her dagger-like nail in Vera's chest.
"I didn't– I didn't talk to any tabloids," Vera said desperately, looking at Sharise for help, but the disappointed look in those brown eyes made shame well like poison in her chest. "I swear, I didn't talk to any tabloids. I just wanted you to make up because you're both my clients and it would... It would make my life easier if you weren't enemies." She felt like a puddle of smelly dog poo admitting her selfishness out loud like that.
Carmen let out a shriek of hysterical laughter. "Fuck you, Vera. You lying little shit."
Sharise opened her mouth, but she didn't say anything. That was the absolute worst part.
"You don't know what the fuck this feels like," Carmen shouted, but her anger was jagged with pain. "You don't get it, okay? Yesterday was the biggest premiere of my career, and instead of celebrating I have to deal with this." She gestured wildly, at everything. "You want the truth? I don't know what I'm doing with Nia. I've never even kissed a girl before." Big tears welled in her eyes and began to drip down her cheeks, like jewels in the morning light. "I don't even get to have my personal crises in private. No, I have to question my sexuality in front of the whole fucking world on what is supposed to be my day of goddamn triumph. And you were supposed to be my friend."
Maybe that broken-apart look on Carmen's face was the worst part.
"Carmen, I–" Vera didn't know what to say.
She could put the pieces together. Marina had spent the night with Carmen. But before that, someone had taken some incriminating photos of them together. And now an experience that should have been one of joyful exploration for Carmen became something traumatic, polluted by the poison of unwanted exposure.
"Get out." Carmen rubbed an angry palm over her tears.
Sharise finally spoke up, her voice soft and without its usual firm certainty. "I told you she was with me last night. She didn't do this."
Carmen rounded on her. "You could have told me she was working for Marina. What else are you hiding from me?"
"Nothing." Sharise spread her hands. "I didn't know, either."
"You expect me to believe that? You two live together."
"She didn't know." Vera couldn't meet Sharise's eyes. "I knew she wouldn't want to keep it from you, so I didn't tell her. But I swear, that has nothing to do with whatever happened last night."
"I told you to get out!" Carmen thrust a finger at the door, her eyes blazing.
"You can't blame Sharise-"
"I don't fucking care what you have to say. You're a liar and I can't trust you. You're fired, by the way. I never want to see your face again."
Now Vera's eyes started getting hot. She looked at Sharise, but there was nothing else she could do.
With no more arguments left in her, she turned, and she walked out.
But she didn't leave.
In the hallway, she squatted on her heels across from Carmen's door and picked at her nails, feeling utterly helpless. Raised voices pushed muffled through the thickness of the heavy wood.
It was too late to regret not telling Carmen sooner, but she regretted it anyway. She should have told them both as soon as she signed the contract with Marina.
"Stupid," she muttered to herself. "Stupid."
When the coffee finally arrived, carried by a man on a gleaming silver tray beside crystal bowls of dates and pastries, he was too professional to stare at her in her miserable puddle of self-pity on the floor. Cora let him in, and her eyebrows shot up when she saw Vera. She closed the door without a word, but a few long, tight breaths later it opened again. The man left without his silver tray, and Sharise stepped out behind him.
Vera pushed to stand on stiff knees. Her face felt hot and her throat hurt, but she couldn't do anything about that, either. For a moment they just looked at each other. Down the hall, the elevator doors swished closed.
"I'm sorry." Vera tugged at the ends of her hair. "I couldn't leave until I was sure Carmen wasn't blaming you for this."
"You'll be waiting a while, then."
Vera winced. "This thing with the tabloids or whatever - I promise, I don't have anything to do with that."
"I know."
Vera took a step closer, then stopped. Less than an hour before they'd been lying entangled in the morning sunlight, and now she didn't even feel like she could reach out and take her hand.
"I should have told you I've been working with Marina. I just didn't want Carmen to know, and I couldn't ask you to lie to her for me."
Slowly, Sharise shook her head. "I don't know what to think, Vera. I don't understand why you felt like you couldn't tell us."
She let out a short, damp laugh. "I didn't want Carmen to fire me because I was working for her enemy."
"So you lied to me, too?" The wound in that cut like a stitch ripper through Vera's heart.
"I wish I hadn't."
"And you came up with a scheme to get them back together instead of just telling us?" Sharise pressed her knuckles into her forehead like she had a headache. "And I helped you. Sweet Jesus. I feel used."
"Angel-"
"Please- Don't call me that right now."
That almost squeezed tears out of Vera's eyes. She blinked them back, sucked in a steadying breath.
"I thought that you of all people would understand how important honesty is to me," Sharise said, this thread of hurt in her voice that knotted up in Vera's heart like she was the absolute scum of the earth. Because she did understand. She had known what betraying Sharise's trust might cost. And she had done it anyway.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I never meant to hurt you."
From inside Carmen's hotel room echoed a long wail of grief.
"Carmen needs me." Sharise pulled in a long, weighted breath. "And I think I need you to give me a little space, Vera."
"Space?"
"Yes. I need some time to sort out how I feel about this."
The pain in Vera's throat swelled to a lump. "Okay," she said, even though she wanted to argue. She couldn't lose Sharise. Not over this one stupid choice she'd made. But she couldn't ask Sharise to ignore Carmen's crisis or her own feelings, either. "We can talk when we're back in LA?"
"I don't know. Maybe." Her brows wrinkled, unhappy, uncertain. "I'll... I'll let you know when I'm ready to talk again."
And Sharise turned and went back inside, taking the biggest piece of Vera's heart with her.